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David Spates Is the marriage penalty A Crossville Chronicle reader recently
told me that my column regarding Al Gore's and George Bush's
lack of leadership qualities seemed rather cynical. The reader,
who I must say was very polite in revealing his observations
and interpretations of my work, added that perhaps I should look
for ways to foster positive change rather than taking potshots
at what irks me. This reader gave me a lot to think about.
Maybe I am too quick to criticize. Perhaps I should propose positive
answers to the problems of the day rather than making wisecracks.
Maybe I could use my powers for good, not evil. Maybe. So with all of this reader input ricocheting through my gray matter, I began to plan a column that would be more optimistic and encouraging. I tried, honest I did. The trouble is that the people running this
country and the people who would like to run this country seem
to be asking - practically begging - me to rip into them.
How can I pass on an issue like the marriage penalty? Someone
has got to say something about that, and I'm just the guy to
do it. Maybe I'll be more positive and less cynical next week. The marriage penalty is a quirk in the federal
tax code which requires a married couple earning two wages to
pay more taxes than a non-married couple filing their taxes separately.
I doubt this was the legislator's intent when he sat down and
tapped out the tax code on his constituent-paid-for computer,
but it's just how the numbers come out. Being one-half of a two-income-earning married
couple, that really kind of steams me when I think about it.
What kind of message does that send to the American people? Right-thinking
people don't choose their mates based on the tax benefits they
might receive, but it seems rather ridiculous to take more taxes
from a married couple than from a couple just shacking up. The
tax burden should, at the least, be equal. Anyway, our cigar-loving president last week
vetoed a measure that would have rectified this nonsense and
done away with the marriage penalty. In his defense, the bill
contained lots of other legislation apart from the marriage penalty
language. Clinton said the 10-year $292 billion tax cut provided
little substantive tax relief for families that need it the most
and at the same time gave enormous tax relief for families with
high incomes. In a letter to Congress explaining his veto, Billy
wrote that the legislation and other tax cuts "provide about
as much benefit to the top 1 percent of Americans as to the bottom
80 percent combined." So now the Republicans have an easy campaign
issue with which they can hammer away at the Clinton-Gore administration.
"The Clinton-Gore administration is anti-marriage, anti-family
and anti-tax break! Elect George, and he'll set things right!" It will be a contentious issue in the coming
months, I promise you that, and the cynic in me can't help but
wonder if the Republicans sent that bill to Bill knowing full
well that he would veto it, thereby giving them political ammunition.
There are millions of married couples earning two incomes in
America, and I'm sure the marriage penalty irritates them like
it does me. Does the bill give an unfair benefit to the
richest families in America? How should I know? I haven't had
time to sort through and digest the reams of paper on which the
bill is written, and I don't have a taxpayer-funded staff of
minions to read it and give me the Cliff's Notes version. I wish
I had the time, but I don't. So I'm left with my elected representatives,
all of whom, I have no doubt, have any number of agendas at work,
the least of which, the skeptic in me would say, is what my wife
and I pay in taxes every year. I don't get the sense that the people making
these decisions for me and my fellow Americans give a rat's dorsum
about the marriage penalty. In this case, married couples and
their money are pawns in the game to determine who will sit in
the country's biggest chair. I wish I had a positive solution to offer. If I had the answers, I'd give them. Maybe next week I'll write a column that's a little less cynical, but I make no promises. It's campaign time, and the buffoons of the world make it hard for me to restrain myself. |